Do you ever pine for the cheap and dirty, but somehow musical and inspiring, sound of your old portable 4-track? The Distortastudio brings that sound to your Colour Palette without a big tape machine taking up space in your studio.
The Distortastudio's circuitry is directly inspired by the channel strip of a late-80's TASCAM machine. It even features the same opamps, obtained NOS (new old stock) and available in a limited quantity.
Just like your old 4-track, you can run the Distortastudio at low gain for subtle solid-state dirt or at high gain for trashy distortion and hiss.
FEATURES
- Four stages of channel strip circuitry
- Original, NOS opamps
- Compatible with the Colour format
- Black PCB
- Full, step-by-step assembly instructions
For more info, check out our series of posts about the Distortastudio design process:
- Assembly Guide (v1.1, most recent)
- Assembly Guide (Rev A)
- Schematic
- Design process blog posts:
Customer Reviews
Love it. Lo-fi vibes
I love this module for when I'm really trying to get creative with my distortion. I use it a lot on drums and in particular snares to get a really compressed snare sound.
When you need to dirty something up, this is the move. I bought this to add some real dirt and crunch to my colour palette chain. I’ve been slamming my bass guitar through it to get super crunchy warm tones. As a music producer primarily using the computer, i’m always looking for ways to dirty up sounds that suffer from being too digital clean/plastic-y. This thing is a nice cure all for that “i recorded this demo in my bedroom in the 1980s sound.” As always, super super fun to build, really easy and intuitive instructions. An absolute blast for a super audio nerd like me.
Awesome raw, dist, sound. Get some drums thru it, trust me it wont disappoint!
While my title doesn't necessarily sound like a compliment, it is. It really helps get the fuzzies in there and is a blast on drums or bass. Fairly easy to build, so a definite thumbs up. If you have played with guitar, you know how annoying dirt boxes can be. They just are never quite right. This is different, it makes that dirty sound the way it sounds in my noggin, so that was great for me. Great price as well.
